


blood moon

by hoverbun



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Blood Magic, Canon Dialogue, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Family Issues, Girl Saves Girl, Past Child Abuse, Patch 4.3: Under the Moonlight Spoilers, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27915523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoverbun/pseuds/hoverbun
Summary: A personal vendetta that rips itself free, like a ravaged heart. She is the Warrior of Light, and she refuses to ignore her shadow.
Relationships: Yotsuyu goe Brutus/Warrior of Light, mentioned Asahi sas Brutus/Zenos yae Galvus
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	blood moon

**Author's Note:**

> arabella is my wol. she is... not a vampire, but definitely a blood mage. her parents taught her about the dangers and strengths of blood magic. she knows how to heal and kill. i like to play fast and loose with my canon T_T;;
> 
> for class purposes, she’s a red mage. i’m shy about telling the added non canon lore about my girl!
> 
> content warning for the canon scene from 4.3: under the moonlight. descriptions of physical sibling abuse below. use of canon dialogue for narration.

The moon disappears in petals of spider lilies and the taste of mango smoke. Tsukuyomi does not crash to the ground, but rather floats to her knees, and hasn’t the energy to keep herself up before dropping to her stomach. She is a woman, and nothing more. Moonlight lingers on her skin. Arabella’s teeth chatters, as they happen to do often these days.

The whir of unfamiliar technology fills the room with a steady hum. Distantly, pipes rattle and the cerulean-powered lights flicker from the interference of aether. Behind her, Arabella can taste the drained dredges of the crystal offering. The room is empty, vacant of warmth, and it is very, distinctly Garlean. When Arabella takes a breath, it is very cold.

Tsukuyomi is still breathing. Yotsuyu—her shoulders shudder, and her eyes struggle to open. Arabella knows she still lingers. She can see her soon wrapped beneath the warm blanket of a futon in the Enclave. The kindness of blood healing her wounds. Desperation wracking in her chest to set it right, doused in second chances.

The crack of a gun. The  _ BANG _ whirls past her, and a bullet pierces Yotsuyu’s hip, to which she spits a hollow, pained gasp. Arabella’s body snaps beneath the tension, and she whips her whole body around. Asahi stands at the peak of the cargo bay steps. In his hand, a pistol of Garlean make.

He pulls the trigger again, and the second  _ BANG _ makes Arabella jump. Yotsuyu’s body, her half-corpse, rattles once more, her gasp a blood-stained warning. Arabella’s hands tremble, first. Then, her lips. Not a sound passes her, until Asahi meets her, stepping to her side and smiling his charcoal stare.

“You really must learn to finish the job,” Asahi tells her, with all the gentle reprimand of an older brother. He sheaths the pistol.

“She’s—” Arabella finds her tongue is full inside her mouth, as if it too was doused in blood. “She’s been defeated. That, that... was unnecessary.”

“‘Tis true that a gaudy mirror and a handful of crystals make for a feeble summoning, but even the weakest eikon is a god of sorts.” Asahi’s explanation is marked with a smile. “A threat that must be put down.”

He takes large, slouching steps forward, as if he were wading through water. Arabella realizes where he’s walking. She warns—“Don’t go near her.”

“My,  _ my! _ Such  _ hostility!” _ Asahi proclaims over his shoulder. “These beings are the sworn enemy of the Empire—I merely did my duty as an imperial officer.”

He whips himself around, eyes bright like an eclipsed sun; hollow and unmoving, with all the zeal of a man gorged on his own plan. “Will you surrender to anger, then? Slay an anointed emissary to avenge a fallen foe?”

The fear in Arabella’s throat has poisoned into anger—she feels her fists clench, gloves tight and uncomfortable as she grows warm. Asahi relishes in her fury, throwing his arms wide. “You  _ can’t,  _ of course! To do so would burn the bridges we have laboured so hard to build!”

“How could you lie so—so  _ incredibly!” _ Arabella yells over him, stomping one foot forward.

“Is it a  _ lie _ to remark on the state of our affairs?” Asahi’s head lolls against his shoulders, like the threat of his smile could make it fall right off, pulled wide and vile. “Where you see a pitiful creature—I acknowledge its eikonhood. A primal that threatens our unity!”

Arabella’s spine coils and stiffens, and she feels an insurmountable rage in her stomach - it broils her blood, like a body of water thrashed by the ocean’s storm, biting at its shore.

“Ah, but I’m forgetting - they’re already  _ ash! _ This Doman woman has seen to that!” Perhaps his teeth chatter, too; bridled on his own excitement, the total rush from his own voice and unkind plans open before them both, like unfurling the flag of a cold and unforgiving kingdom. “The Empire cannot ally itself with any nation that refuses to renounce summoning! I believe I was most clear on that point!”

“There remains evidence,” Arabella retorts, “Your company—even they would not be so mindless lily  _ corrupt _ to kneel before your word!”

Asahi ignores her with a sharp laugh—throwing his head back and baring his teeth. Arabella’s eyes burn and her jaw aches from how tightly she has clenched herself. Her fist shakes at her side, a burning in her palm from the swell of blood beneath. Its power thrums. She withholds herself. In the air, she can smell Yotsuyu bleed.

As Asahi’s head falls low, Arabella catches him staring at the cole body of Yotsuyu. “The  _ power _ he bestowed upon her…” he ruminates, a bitterness souring his voice. “I should have been the one to govern Doma!  _ I _ would have repaid his faith!”

He whips his head back to Arabella, clenching his hands and bracing them against his chest. “No one  _ alive _ loves him more than I!” 

His confession burns him, summoned from the depth of his own blackened heart and sworn on personal vengeance. Arabella sees the bloodied smile of Asahi’s beloved prince, stained in her memory and crowned with sunlight. In the broiling well of her mind, she thinks for just a moment— _ like two birds that mate for life. _ In her thoughts, she thinks of a broken nest. 

“Instead this  _ harlot _ betrayed his trust!” Asahi turns back to Yotsuyu, a wild fury possessing him. He brings his foot back and strikes it into her side, driving his boot into the bullet hole in her side. 

Arabella’s memory shatters.

“Useless piece of filth!” he cries, lifting his leg to stomp on her stomach. “Worthless whore!”

When one reacts to sudden, violent anger that washes their heart like a flash flood, they might say something like  _ I wasn’t thinking.  _ Perhaps a confession of  _ I forgot where I was. _ Maybe even a lie. Maybe they say nothing at all. Arabella knows what breaks through her walls and arms her vengeance; the burden of family.

She does not need a lesson in where family is chosen; she knows that she may choose who she cherishes, that she may accept fault and reward kindness. But when blood mixes with acid, and the truth of history weighs you down, it fells the tree. It salts the land. The crush of Asahi’s boot sounds just like the weight of feet in sand, and for that one moment, she sees a different boy, with white hair like hers and crystal in his eyes. Her own brother grinds his heel into the corpse, and Arabella realizes she’s screaming.

Her sword clatters to the ground and she is upon Asahi. Her nails bare and she drags them down the first surface of flesh she finds. Under her nails, she feels the small specks of torn skin and the surface-layer blood. It is enough to awaken the pool, and as she screams she hears Asahi scream too, the rake of her nails down his face now alight with crimson heat.

Asahi punches her. She feels it in her rib, where his heavy gloved fist hits where her clothing is thin. He punches again, as Arabella brings both hands to his face and thinks of blood, the crimson, the way it tastes and the way it flows through the skin, and she burns him. The claw marks on his cheek flare with an ugly red, tearing as if they were sears on meat. Asahi flails and for once, Arabella enjoys it.

He brings one leg up and kicks her off. When her hands leave his skin, the burning stops. Asahi stands on his knees with a hand launched forward, gripping Arabella’s throat and pulling free his gun. He steadies the shot as her nails claw into his wrist, knee pressing into his hip—

A sword pierces his body, quick and abrupt. A quick cut with a bloody blade. A second one joins the other, and they cross one another. Asahi’s breathing cracks, and he drops his gun. The blood on the blades is thick, and drips from the curved shape. The steel is not steel at all, instead manifestations of pure light—as Asahi’s body is dragged effortlessly into the air, aloft from the ground, Arabella can see they are almost like stone, bathed in moonlight.

Yotsuyu lifts a hand up into the air. She rattles— _ “Thank you, dear brother, for this gift… Vengeance.” _

The swords cross further. Blood falls to the floor, and Arabella realizes it is on her, too. Asahi’s blood stains her clothes, and she touches a blotch of red with her fingertips. She can hear his agony. She can hear his rage. It is a song of violent fortune. She wishes she could scrub it out.

Asahi’s body—a fresh corpse—is disposed of with a flick of Yotsuyu’s weak wrist. He crashes to the ground without the ethereal moonlit grace Yotsuyu had. The blades withdraw and dissipate into petals. 

Arabella crawls to Yotsuyu. She is sore. It is incomparable to the way Yotsuyu bleeds. She stops crawling next to Yotsuyu’s body, who drops her hand down against her chest. Her purple and white robes coil around her limbs like discarded silk, as she stares to the high steel ceiling. 

Yotsuyu notices her. “What’s the matter…? The Witch of Doma will soon be dead.”

Arabella finds her chest is wound tight, and she struggles to even sigh. “Tsuyu deserved a kinder fate.”

It sounds as if Yotsuyu laughs. “Her happiness was not to be… not in this world.”

With great care to not tear her any further, Arabella pulls herself to Yotsuyu and welcomes her head against her lap. She helps her lay down, seated upon her thighs and lower body. Her arms help the dying girl find some comfort. If Yotsuyu is offended, she hasn’t the strength to fight against her.

“The people of my country… they ignore the corruption that festers beneath the surface. Cast aside that which is dirty and broken. Speak not of that which would disrupt their dreary little lives.”

“Let me help,” Arabella pleads. “I can stop the bleeding.”

Yotsuyu cranes her neck, her whitened hair spilling down into Arabella’s legs. “There’s nothing left to fix. There’s nothing you can save.”

Arabella reaches her hand to touch the bloody flank of Yotsuyu’s hip. She hears the girl hiss below her, flinching from the gentle pressure. The blood that seeps from Yotsuyu boils with a rage and vengeance that stings Arabella’s hands. She can hear her furious memories. She can feel her agony. When she touches her wound, Arabella wills the blood to stop spilling.

“Like him… they would look away from that which is tainted. Allow no mercy for those bearing the curse of others.”

“Defined by where you come from,” Arabella adds.

“Sometimes…. sometimes, not even that. Sometimes… your reputation would precede you.” Yotsuyu closes her eyes. “Leave me be, silly girl. Let me die without dignity.”

Arabella leads her hand over Yotsuyu’s stomach, feeling the blood shift and follow. With a stained hand, she extends her arm to the corpse of Asahi, and feels the swell of blood from his rotten body, swept into mist that now dances beneath her fingers. Arabella gently lays her newly stained hand to Yotsuyu, seeping into her robes and mixing into her flesh. It reminds her of weaving thread together. It will keep her steady. It may even keep her alive.

Yotsuyu sighs. “It no longer hurts,” she whispers.

“That’s good,” Arabella says quietly, as the echo of footsteps approach them. “It won’t hurt anymore.”


End file.
